Edinburgh - Royal Botanic Garden

The Royal Botanic Garden, situated to the north of the city center, is the second oldest botanical garden in the British Isles. Within the magnificent 70-acre/28ha site, there is an herbarium and Great Britain's biggest palm house, a tropical house with exotic orchids, a collection of cacti and succulents, an alpine house, a terraced moorland garden, a heather garden with all the calluna vulgaris species that grow in the Highlands, an extensive arboretum with some rare giant trees (from the Himalayas, North America and China), a woodland garden with colorful azaleas, hydrangeas, camellias, saxifrage and rhododendrons, an aquatic house with tropical water plants such as the pink water lily from India and the huge South American water lily (Victoria Regis), a rock garden and the Exhibition Hall which regularly plays host to touring exhibitions.